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"The Intellectual-Principle" [= the Divine Mind]- we read [in
the Timaeus]- "looks upon the Ideas indwelling in that Being
which is the Essentially Living [= according to Plotinus, the
Intellectual Realm], "and then"- the text proceeds- "the Creator
judged that all the content of that essentially living Being must
find place in this lower universe also."
Are we meant to gather that the Ideas came into being before the
Intellectual-Principle so that it "sees them" as previously
existent?
The first step is to make sure whether the "Living Being" of the
text is to be distinguished from the Intellectual-Principle as
another thing than it.
It might be argued that the Intellectual-Principle is the
Contemplator and therefore that the Living-Being contemplated is
not the Intellectual-Principle but must be described as the
Intellectual Object so that the Intellectual-Principle must
possess the Ideal realm as something outside of itself.
But this would mean that it possesses images and not the
realities, since the realities are in the Intellectual Realm
which it contemplates: Reality- we read- is in the Authentic
Existent which contains the essential form of particular things.
No: even though the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual
Object are distinct, they are not apart except for just that
distinction.
Nothing in the statement cited is inconsistent with the
conception that these two constitute one substance- though, in a
unity, admitting that distinction, of the intellectual act [as
against passivity], without which there can be no question of an
Intellectual-Principle and an Intellectual Object: what is meant
is not that the contemplatory Being possesses its vision as in
some other principle, but that it contains the Intellectual Realm
within itself.
The Intelligible Object is the Intellectual-Principle itself in
its repose, unity, immobility: the Intellectual-Principle,
contemplator of that object- of the Intellectual-Principle thus
in repose is an active manifestation of the same Being, an Act
which contemplates its unmoved phase and, as thus contemplating,
stands as Intellectual-Principle to that of which it has the
intellection: it is Intellectual-Principle in virtue of having
that intellection, and at the same time is Intellectual Object,
by assimilation.
This, then, is the Being which planned to create in the lower
Universe what it saw existing in the Supreme, the four orders of
living beings.
No doubt the passage: [of the Timaeus] seems to imply tacitly
that this planning Principle is distinct from the other two: but
the three- the Essentially-Living, the Intellectual-Principle and
this planning Principle will, to others, be manifestly one: the
truth is that, by a common accident, a particular trend of
thought has occasioned the discrimination.
We have dealt with the first two; but the third- this Principle
which decides to work upon the objects [the Ideas] contemplated
by the Intellectual-Principle within the Essentially-Living, to
create them, to establish them in their partial existence- what
is this third?
It is possible that in one aspect the Intellectual-Principle is
the principle of partial existence, while in another aspect it is
not.
The entities thus particularized from the unity are products of
the Intellectual-Principle which thus would be, to that extent,
the separating agent. On the other hand it remains in itself,
indivisible; division begins with its offspring which, of course,
means with Souls: and thus a Soul- with its particular Souls- may
be the separative principle.
This is what is conveyed where we are told that the separation is
the work of the third Principle and begins within the Third: for
to this Third belongs the discursive reasoning which is no
function of the Intellectual-Principle but characteristic of its
secondary, of Soul, to which precisely, divided by its own Kind,
belongs the Act of division.
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